Cast your minds back three months… there was some party disquiet when Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland first proposed that pubs and restaurants should be forced to start selling smaller glasses of wine again. There were suggestions it sounded a little bit illiberal and nanny-state. The point was soon made that Greg was seeking to restore consumer choice which has been largely eroded in recent years – as Greg said:
In the last few years there has been a deliberate move by many bar and pub companies to phase out the traditional standard size 125ml glass of wine, and only sell the larger 175ml and 250ml size. In the latter case this is almost half a pint of wine. The result inevitably has been that wine drinkers are less aware of how many units of alcohol they are drinking when they have ‘a few of glasses of wine’. This is a real concern at a time when the figures show that alcohol related health problems are increasing, including women who drink the majority of wine purchased in bars and pubs.”
Today Greg’s stance has been backed by the Royal College of Physicians, as well as the chief executive of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, Jeremy Beadles:
Our view is that customers should be offered a choice of different wine glass sizes when they are drinking in a pub or restaurant.”
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Why non-fiction books need their indexes
Changes in status: Local Elections wrap up
What should the Liberal Democrats stand for?
Ben Wood
Ed Sanderson
Jack
Matt (Bristol)
John Grout
19 Comments
Oh come on. 125 is a pathetic amount. The real issue surely is price. For a £10 bottle, a 250 glass should be £3.33 plus a bit more. But it’s typically way more than that. Give me value please, not poxy measures.
The idea that people are “less unaware” of what they’re drinking or, to quote the Doctor Professor Whatever, are “just not realising what they are drinking”, is typically patronising and yes, illiberal.
Interesting that you should mention this, because I myself am drinking now. I’m “preparing” for a lunchtime/afternoon visit to the pub, then proceeding from there to go out clubbing. A Lib Dem night if ever theres one. 🙂
If there was any evidence that people across the land were going into pubs and saying “can I have a 125ml glass of wine plese? ” and the trade were saying ” No, its 250 or nothing” then I would support legislation as you would have market failure. However I very much doubt that. Its really an educational issue.
Why should measures be regulated or uniform anyway.
Let the outlet decide what sizes and how he wishes to present his products to his customers.
Then let his customers decide whether they want to do business in his/her establishment.
Free choice!! something that is all but gone in this country.
I was taken out to lunch yesterday, in a restaurant I’d never eaten in before. My host bought us each a glass of wine and luckily they served small glasses, since I was driving.
What should I have done if they hadn’t? Refused to eat there? Get my host to pay for a large glass of wine and then leave half of it (leaving the restaurant richer and my host poorer)?
I think it’s a little more subtle than just the choice of the pub/restaurant on what measures to serve me in reality.
After all, imagine the pub or restaurant owner really had freedom: none of this red tape rubbish. Should I then have a checklist to go through on choices, cleanliness, etc. before crossing the threshold?
Ian Roberts: have a bottle of water instead? You knew you were driving. Have a little self-abnegation in the name of the common good, instead of expecting Nanny State to make the choice for you?
Freedom with responsibility is licence.
I’m not sure what this article is trying to say. Is the point that because doctors want to enforce something that it can’t be illiberal? Or is it that because the argument is put forward by a doctor that it might be illiberal but that it is worthwhile?
Do we really want to go down either route?
The real issue is whether this is an issue politicians should be involved in at all. Surely it’s up to the business to decide what measures to serve and for customers to decide what to buy. If there is a demand for smaller measures, pubs will answer it.
(Just as it should be left to supermarkets to decide what price they sell alcohol at and for adult customers to decide how much they buy).
Laurence Boyce Says:
‘Oh come on. 125 is a pathetic amount.’
For wine of 12% by vol it is 1.5 units. Probably won’t put most people over the drink drive limit – but a 250 ml glass might do so given the varying rates at which people process alcohol in their bodies.
I feel that as well as having to display prices, pubs should also display the number of units of alcohol in each standard measure (i.e. pint, small glass, large glass etc. as appropriate) for each different alcoholic drinbk they are selling. They would then be providing the information for people to make a better-informed decision on how much they should/do drink.
Ban all drink. Then I won’t have to have mornings like this again!
Anonymous: interesting – you suggest that it’s perfectly OK for me to lose the choice of buying a small glass of wine. Sounds like it’s you who wants to do the nannying.
Why not allow me, as an adult, to have the choice to buy and drink a small glass of wine before legally driving?
I, personally, would not drink at all before driving. The drink drive limit is as artificial as the “safe” limits of 21 units a week for men and 14 for women.
Iain, if you really, really WANT a small glass, then take one with you. Whenever I go down south, where they still don’t know how to serve beer properly, I take along with me a sparkler. Most barmaids are happy to attach it to the beer pump so I can have my beer Northern style.
If you want choice, help the business to give you choice.
When I go to the cinema even the smallest box of popcorn I can purchase is the size of a vast bucket. Please please Lib Dem health team campaign for teeny weeny boxes of popcorn now before I succumb to obesity. Only Greg, Norman and the Lib Dem can save us cinema goers from early popcorn induced graves.
Jennie – what a wonderful idea. I’m not sure I’d ever be organised enough to have a clean wine glass with me in the car, but I do like the idea 🙂
But the real point is surely something that was figured out hundreds of years ago: where there’s no regulation, the spoils go to the person with the power. In different situations that could be a business owner, vendor, customer or employee. A little judicious light-touch regulation (or even the threat of it) is often all that’s needed to redress the power balance for the overall good.
Or alternatively just ask for the glass to not be filled up? No reason why 175ml glasses shouldn’t have a 125ml mark on them.
Forcing businesses to have specific sizes of glass is daft and pointless, if there’s demand from consumers they’ll figure out a way to supply, the pub trade is being pushed around enough as it is without this pointless interference.
Graduated glasses is a brilliant idea!
Graduated glasses sounds good – as long as the staff actually know how much to charge for a smaller glass and don’t panic.
People why do you NEED to drink if you know you are driving? If your going to drive then don’t touch the stuff, full stop!